Surf School: iRider and website forms

iRider's multi-page browsing features extend to every type of page you can open on a website, whether opened from a simple link or even in response to information you enter in a form, such as a search form. This gives it unique abilities that other browsers such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape, MyIE2, Netcaptor or Safari just don't have. Attempting some of the things described here would be far more difficult and time-consuming with virtually every another browser. (Opera is the only browser we've seen that can come close, though it has its own particular limitations.)

Maps to the stars homes

There are many occasions when it's useful to see the results of more than one search side-by-side for quick reference or comparison (or even just to keep track of which search terms you've already tried).

To take a simple example, let's say your company is dead set against accounting for stock options as an expense, and so you need to visit several lobbying firms in Washington, DC, in hopes of derailing accounting reform legislation. You need a map to each lobbyist (and to a shoe store that sells tasselled loafers), so you visit Yahoo Maps and enter the first lobbyist's address in the search form:

A separate page opens in the iRider Page List with the map:

You click the Back button to return to the search form and enter your next stop, also on M Street — no need to re-enter the other parts of the address. Then you right-click the "Get Map" button to Surf-Ahead the map search:

Another page with the second map opens and starts downloading, while you remain on the search form:

You can quickly enter each address on your itinerary and right-click "Get Map." You don't have to wait for each map to download, since they'll download concurrently while you work. When you're done, you'll have a set of maps that you can flip through at will, instantly:

You can keep all these maps open on your laptop for ready reference as you make the rounds of Washington's influence brokers. The only way to do this in most browsers would be to employ awkward contortions with multiple windows or tabs and lots of re-typing — give it a try. In iRider, it's natural and easy.

How to save money and avoid connecting in Dallas without really trying

When you're shopping, it can be very useful to try more than one variation of a search to compare prices and to run multiple searches at once to save time.

A classic example is searching for flights on a travel site. Let's say you've had enough of the bitter California winter, so you're escaping to the Big Island. You go to your travel site (Expedia in this example), enter airports and dates in the search form, and start the search:

Flight searches take awhile, and while you're waiting you realize that it might be easier to fly out of Oakland instead of San Francisco. You leave your first search running and click Back (or press F2) to instantly return to the search form and change the departure airport to Oakland:

The other stuff you entered — dates, destination, number of adults and children — are still there, so there's no need to re-enter it, though you may have to with Internet Explorer and other browsers. [Since this article was written, Expedia has been changed to remember and re-fill the parameters of your last search, but it does so only after the complete home page has downloaded, which can take some time. In iRider, the original search parameters are there instantly.]

Then you click Search again to start the second, simultaneous search.

You review and compare the flights and fares from SFO and OAK, instantly bouncing between the two search results, and realize that SFO has good flights that'll save you about $100 compared to Oakland:

Then you remember that airline fares can vary a lot depending on the dates you travel, so you decide to try several different dates. You go back to the search form, change the dates and then right-click the "Search for flight" button to Surf-Ahead the search:

This starts another search in another page, while you remain on the search form:

Instead of waiting for this search to finish, you enter several different dates, right-clicking "Search" each time to start several simultaneous searches:

You've effortlessly gotten Expedia to run several searches for you at once, vastly reducing the amount of waiting for this many searches. (The waiting time for flight searches has little to do with the speed of one's Internet connection — you're mostly waiting for the website's servers to run the search, and each search can take 15 seconds or more. Doing multiple searches at once overlaps these delays and lets them run while you review the results.)

You riffle around instantly between search results to figure out the flight with the best fare, best schedule and fewest stops, that hopefully isn't on Chapter 11 Airlines. ("Wow — it'd be $600 more to fly out on Saturday!")

You Surf-Ahead links to particular flights for any given day, in usual iRider fashion, to simultaneously download additional flight details:

You narrow down the possibilities by Pinning flights that look good, then book the one you like.

You saved a lot of money, avoided those stops in Atlanta, Dallas and Baghdad, and did it without endless waiting for searches, or the multi-window/multi-tab contortions and repeated re-typing of search criteria that other browsers would require to search simultaneously. (Go ahead — try this at home with another browser. Just keep the aspirin handy.)

This sort of multi-search capability applies to any kind of web form, such as a search on Amazon or eBay, or any search engine. It even works in the iRider Address Bar when typing URLs or web searches. Because iRider opens form results into a separate page, multiple searches can be opened and perused effortlessly:

Freedom from form fear: you won't lose all that stuff you typed

Everyone on the web has known the face of horror: You're using Browser X, and you type a long message in the support form for Charlie's Software, complaining about terrible bugs in their product:

When you click Send, you get an error message because the website has a problem or because you got disconnected:

You click the Back button to return to the form, and your message is gone:

You take hostages and get featured on Fox TV's "When Hominids Attack!" Your prospects in the New Hampshire Primary have suddenly turned very dim.

With iRider, the information you've entered on a form isn't deleted until you explicity close the form page. That's true even if you use the Back or Forward buttons, click over to other pages in the Page List, or send the form to a website and get an error message. This lets you re-send the form, or at least copy your message into an email or document.

This feature can be especially useful if you need to refer to other pages as you fill out a form (e.g., "What was the URL of that page containing those actionably libelous comments?"). Just click on pages in the Page List, then click Back until you're back on the form page — the stuff you typed is still there.

"Form and function should be one." — Frank Lloyd Wright